The other day I went over my fantasy baseball strategy for snake drafts. Lots of you know my auction tips already, but some of you just joining us — hey, close the door behind you! — may not. Lots of the strategy for my snake drafts also applies here. If you ask me — and you kinda did ask me by reading this shizz — auction drafts are where it’s at, yo! You get in a room with your best fantasy baseball buddies. The guys you haven’t seen since last year’s draft. The guys you don’t want to see until next year’s draft. A few guys you actively despise. One guy, and there’s always one, has his phone on vibrate just in case the missus calls about Petey, their sick Schnauzer. Then you have the guy who will go the extra dollar for (fill-in favorite player from his favorite team). You know he’s his favorite player because he’s wearing his jersey. You have the guy who brings only Cheetos and turns everything he touches orange, and, if he touches something that was already orange, he makes it oranger. Finally, you have the guy who made plans at 5PM and begins to yell at everyone at 4PM that they’re taking too long. And, it always turns out, this day is the best day of the year. Auction draft day is better than your wedding day. As for online auction drafts, they’re just a’ight. Anyway, here’s some tried and true tips to help you through your auction fantasy baseball draft:

1. Early in the draft, throw out guys that you know you have no interest in that will cost others a lot.

Say Joe Mauer snuck into a 21 and under club with Joe Jonas’s ID and took your baby’s mama home. Now you refuse to draft him. So the first name you should nominate is Mauer and let others overspend on him. You don’t want high-priced pitching? Nominate Lincecum. You think Carlos Gonzalez is overrated? Nominate him. You get the idea. Moving on…

2. Go the extra dollar if you really want someone.

When you get to the end of the auction, no one has any flippin’ idea what they spent to get a guy. If you want J.J. Putz and every auction value article you’ve read says he’s worth $6 and the bidding’s just gone to $7, go to $8 if you need a closer. It’s your team; you need certain guys whether they’re overpriced or not.

3. You want to be “rich” with auction money.

You won’t always have the most money at the draft, but, whenever possible, you want to. The more money you have A) The better leverage you have attaining any guy you might want. B) You can get great buys late in the draft when no one else has any money. Invariably, someone will throw out, say, Dexter Fowler for a dollar (or some player that they think they can sneak through). Then you get Fowler for $2 and everyone in the draft room groans, wishing they still had some money. At your draft, you want to be like the little tuxedoed guy from Monopoly. In fact, dress like him for your draft.

4. Decent catchers and closers are even easier to acquire in auctions.

In a snake draft, you never know when the Arencibia, Iannetta, Putz, Nathan or whoever is going to be drafted. The beauty of the auction is you can have anyone. In my experience, you should wait until most of the teams have filled up their closers or catcher(s) slot then you nominate some one dollar beauts.

5. Keep track of who other people want.

The beauty of the auction is you know exactly what everyone else is thinking. If Joe Schmohawk goes to $10 on Espinosa and you get him for $11, keep JS in mind when you’re looking to trade Espinosa after his hot April. If someone groans when you get Raburn, keep it in mind. Unless it’s the same guy who’s been eating nothing but Cheetos for ten hours. Then it might just be gas.

Anyone have a good tool or article on how to convert my projections into dollar values? I’d use Lastplayerpicked.com’s price guide tool but this auction league is a points league with different stats worth differing amounts. Thanks.

I agree, best day of the year. I have two auction leagues, an AL-only that has been going strong since ’91, and an NL-only that spawned from the other one six years ago.

As always, Grey is spot-on. I’d like to humbly add a couple of points (forgive me if they’ve been made elsewhere on the site and I’ve missed them).

– There comes a point in nearly every auction where several owners have a fair bit of cash but nothing but marginal players to spend it on. Don’t be one of these guys. Point #2 is a key to this — go ahead and spend the extra few bucks on the money-in-the-bank-type guys and you won’t have $60 burning a hole in your pocket when the best players left are Brandon Inge and Joel Piniero.

– Further to the last point, keep your players sorted by position, and sub-sorted into tiers. Go the extra few bucks if the next available guy at the position represents a significant drop.

– Steve’s point is critical. You absolutely have to have a spreadsheet showing what everyone has at each position, and keep track of the money everyone has left. This is not optional.

@Grey: You mention both being the richest guy in the room and filling your catcher and closer slot after others have done so, I assume that means you are a proponent of tracking the budgets of all the teams and keeping track of all the rosters as the draft progresses? Is there anything else you’d try to track in a live offline auction to gain an upper hand?

this article is main reason why I hate snake and love auction – you are really creating your team

as you say, keep money for late, know your oposition, have a good rank and league is yours….

dont forget on feeding your opposition….you see someone definitly need 2B, and you have one already, put there some for others.. to spend bucks on 2B too..or you see someone is on really high budget, and you dont like to see that because of risk of overpaying, put there something what is missing to the richest guy in draft…

I like auction more, and hope its sound of the future …coz most of the mock snake drafts .. I m only pissed off…

I am responsible for corrupting uncdrew. The auction is the best day of the year. One keg, 30 lbs of meat, charcoal, palm trees, and spreadsheets. Buying a draft board with stickers is worth the money fyi.

I think Point #1 is the best. And the spin-off of that is if you love somebody, particularly a sleeper type, wait and wait and wait for someone else to throw them out. People will have less money to spend on them and less spots to fill, and you can get them cheaper, generally speaking.

I always have a spreadsheet sorted by rank with descending prices. The spreadsheet has columns: Name, position, Number ranking, Snake draft round, Rank (yahoo), Rank (mine), $$ Yahoo, $$ Mine, Sold as, Cost Pct yahoo, Cost Pct mine. The first 8 columns are filled in ahead of time. Sold as is filled in at draft time and the last two columns are calculated as I fill in the sold as.

I also color code names. Those colored Green are names where my rankings (or Greys) are quite a bit higher than Yahoos rankings. These are players I target, hoping to find value here. Those colored red are those players ranked lower than Yahoo. These I avoid. This color scheme helps me stay on track.

From the “Cost pct yahoo” column I can quickly get a feel for how aggressive this draft is going to be. I have different strategies for aggressive versus non aggressive drafts.

I tend to divide each draft into beginning, middle, end.

For an aggressive draft, I do not want to completely shut myself out of top talent, but neither do I want to overspend. So I tend to focus only on green players and go lightly during the top phase (example a late first round green player followed by a late second round green player). So even though I might be overspending during this phase, I am overspending less relative to the rest of the league.

An aggressive draft is also unsustainable. The middle is the point where prices tend to normalize and at my focus is here. However I always keep track of what I spend relative to the rest of the league. My objective at the end phase is to be at the top 1/4 point in money left on the table. I do try to keep a reserve so that I can acquire for $2 or $3 those players that are targets of mine that were nominated by other players. I do not mind being having $2-$3 dollars left on the table as a cost for maintaining a reserve.

A nonaggressive draft will have players at the middle and even at the end sold over value. If the league has identified the same sleepers you have, chances are your sleepers will be sold over value. So here I figure I am better off getting a stash of good players. Now I still do not go crazy and buy 3 1st round players. But I do try to be at the about the 2/3 point as total money spent (meaning I have spent more money than 2/3 of the league). However, at some point I pause in my drafting and let others catch up to me till the end point of the draft where I want to be positioned like an aggressive draft.

The difference being that in this draft there will be 2-3 guys left with large stashes and mediocre players left. You do not want to be one of these guys. You will not be able to compete with these guys anyway for your targets. Hopefully you have enough late round targets that you can move to plan B. You still should be able to get your late round targets when competing with the rest of the league.

Auction is tough. I always find that I have TOO much money left over at the end. I’d love to see some mocks for this year Grey. It’d really help to see how much you’re paying for guys in certain situations.

I’ve never done an auction (doing my first this year), and I’ve heard both point #1, and that some of the best bargains are the first players nominated (since people are “saving” their money). Wouldn’t it make some sense if there are bargains early to nominate players you want?

year after year i realize that i like to get out the first five rds with some form of: 1b, 2b, ss, 3b, 1st of… not necessarily in that order, but you catch my drift… following two rds are usually my first 2 SPs, though (rarely) if an OF I like falls, I don’t hesitate.

I could pick up J. Werth but to get him, I’d have to give up two players: J. Pierre and closer F-Rod.

Since I think F-Rod is in the process of losing some of his sharpness and since I still have F. Francisco, R. Madson, and M. Thornton in the pen (not to mention R. Franklin), I’m all too scared to give up F-Rod. (Just a little.)

But J. Pierre I think balances out my average-stealing / power-heavy team perfectly. There are teams where J. Pierre might actually be underrated and this is one.

That said, isn’t upgrading to Werth werth it? I’d average about 10-15 steals per player without Pierre, more with him.

Grey,
I have a Keeper question for you. Would you keep Oswalt with the 11th pick or Scherzer with the 12th (he was actually drafted in the 17th but we have capped the keeper round at 11 and 12)? We have 2 keepers and I was going to take Hunter’s Pants as a 9th rounder as my other one.

ok maybe I should have been more clear…HOW would you alter your rankings at all if OPS and K’s are additional hitting categories and Holds is an additional pitching category? Do any players stand out that would get a big boost or drop?

I was wondering if you could help me out with my keeper conundrum.
I’m in a 14-team, 2 catcher, .OBP instead of average league.
We can keep 3-to-6 players, losing picks in those rounds. (if I keep 3 guys, I get 3 “replacement picks” before the real draft starts in round 7)
I’d like to keep 3, due to the players that will not be kept.
My options:
1. Pujols
2. Crawford

Love the auctions – been playing in the same NL only keeper league with friends since the late 80s. 8 teams, 9 teams 10 teams, the players change but the league goes on. Used to be the highlight of the draft back in those days when Junior Ortiz was drafted (yes, we’re a 2 catcher league).

Personally, I’m a bargain hunter. If I think I’m getting value on studs, I’ll spend my money early. I still throw the big money guys out early just to level the playing field in case I don’t get them, but I don’t mind buying them because I don’t think most people can come to grips with the inflation issue. RARELY does anybody in my league go for more than $40. One year I spent $42 for Pujols and $40 for Reyes. The rest of the league thought I was crazy.

This year we’re 9 teams. I have Rollins $21 and Furcal $1. I’m going to buy a bopper as I think I need a big stick to go along with Werth, S Smith, McCann, Utley, Stanton and the SSs.

Tulo will be one of the top bats available. Am I crazy to buy him if I can get him under $40 and try to dominate SS? I would then play Furcal or Rollins at Util and have some depth if one of them got injured. I figure it would be alot easier to replace Rollins or Furcal at Util than to spend $ on outfielders (Braun, Kemp and Bruce are probably the other ‘best’ bats available) and have to find another Middle Infielder to replace an injury to Rollins or Furcal.

from my 20 man fantasy basketball auction i will give some advice: early on you might be able to snag a few deals, but as stated above nominate people you DONT want, injury prone guys that can snag a high price, catchers like mauer, or pitchers like lince, let guys overspend, BUT in the middle rounds is where I saw guys get some really good values, then at the end alot of guys were overspending again on players that weren’t worth it just because they a)had the money left b)needed that position c) wanted to piss you off by driving up the price to eat up your last few dollars d) there is no “D”. I think another good strategy I saw a guy employ was he knew an owner wanted a certain player, so he kept bidding one more dollar saying “ok $1 more, but Im not going any higher” the other guy who actually wanted the player would bid, then he’d go “ok this is the last time, $1 more”

I think you have to have the right personality to pull that off, but it was some funny shit! he was also eating cheeto’s…. j/k it was ginger snaps!

I don’t want to get anyone attention to keep an eye on what I am doing during the draft – if you piss people off they might bid up your needs and everyone knows your needs if they spend the time to look at what you drafted

From the Fantabulous TMR’s draft day manifesto (don’t actually read the thing, but skim through to see what the lesser folk may be thinking (and of course, for the comedy!)):

“Jason Grey adds a similar thought: Focus on upside at the end of the draft. You need to hit on a breakout player or two to improve your chances at winning. The “safer” plays will be in the free-agent pool if you need them. Too many players take the safe route in the late rounds.”

Thought at first Berry was crediting razzball, but apparently there is a “Jason” Grey out there reporting on fantasy and what-not for espn, and he’s stealing from “Grey” Grey (not that drafting upside late is an original idea; for fuck’s sake Grey, come up w/ some original ideas!).

Don’t be afraid to spend. Bargains are relative. Set up your tiers and overspend a bit if necessary. If keeper league don’t forget inflation. If all good players are going for more than your values you have a fundamental flaw in your valuations.

Auctions ARE the best aren’t they!?
Love the tips, Grey. Following them is how I got Marmol for $1 in last years auction and I get to keep him for $6 this year!
At some point would you mind writing something about various auction strategies like the “Stars and Scrubs” strat or the “No guys over $20″ strat and the like? I’d like to hear which of them has merit as I’m seriously contemplating trying the Stars and Scrubs this year.

I have Latos in an NL Keeper league ,12 teams, and he was very good to me last year.. he would be one of my keepers (along w/Niese and Nolasco as my only starting pitchers)
I have a guy dangling his Pirates – McCutchen (which he says will take a lot to pry from) and Tabata.

Obviously, I like McC.. he would fit nicely with Rasmus.. who is about the best of my Offensive Keepers.

Do I do it, or will I regret it.. I, too, have some mild concerns about Latos.

Grey, I’m not sure where you posed the question about coining a term for Latin players who heat up gradually with the weather…
“Vote 4 Pedro” – despite an uninspiring campaign in the spring, Pedro Sanchez wins the hearts and minds of fantasy baseballers with a (Napoleon) Dynamite summer. Also called “The Napoleon Dynamite” effect.

While I generally agree that throwing out top players you don’t want early makes sense… in the last couple of years I’ve noticed that the first half dozen guys come out and everyone’s a little timid. So there have been some great deals in that first half a round of noms. Don’t know if anyone else has seen this in their auctions…

Sorry for all the numbers to sift through, but help me understand your advice. Are you keeping them (Howard & ARod) because they’re that good / will bounce back after slightly sub par years? Because $79 (for both) out of $300 is fair? Because the guys I have behind them just aren’t worth it? Because Corners are the key to winning?

I’d like to keep them (especially backed up by your advice) but then I keep going back to value… they may be consistent, but can they earn me much value at $79?

@Grey: Unfortunately, in keeper leagues, I think a couple of your tips are exactly what you DON’T want to do. With inflation (due to good players being kept at low prices), the elite players are actually worth much more than in re-draft leagues (aka the values you see online and in magazines).

Assuming a good portion of your league does not take inflation into account, you will find the elite players going for well under their “inflated value.” Ex: you value Longo at $38 in a vacuum, but with inflation he’s worth $46. He may only go for $42.

That money that wasn’t spend on Longoria will have to be spent elsewhere. Since most elite players are nominated early on, there will be more money left in owners’ budgets near the end of the draft, to be spent on middle-to-lower tier players (read: sleepers).

So, long story short, you need to nominate your targeted lower tier sleepers EARLY to combat late-auction inflation, where you’d have to pay nearly twice as much for a player that you would early on.

Unfortunately, taking advantage of this often leaves you with less money than most players at the end, but at least you’ll be getting good value on every pick.

Of course, all of this goes out the window if you see the elite players actually going for near your calculated inflated value, but that’s usually only in very competitive, long-running auction leagues.

The same thing happened in my draft. Dude came in 5 minutes late to find that the first player nominated was Wainwright and autodraft invested $28 for him. I did feel bad for the guy, but it was funny.

@Grey: I’m not saying you said anything wrong. Your tips are great for a redraft auction.

But for keeper, because of inflation, Tip #1 is probably not going to help. Mauer’s going to get nominated eventually. Rather, you want to use your early nominations on your sleepers, because later on those guys will probably cost a lot more (with the surplus of total league money leftover).

Essentially, for keeper auctions, (a) when other teams nominate elite players, take them if they’re well under inflated value, and (b) use your own early nominations on sleepers.

@Jay: I’m just saying this because there are a lot of keeper league players in the comments, and the presence of keeper inflation might not be known to them. AND, even if they are aware of it, they might not use it to their advantage.

@Grey: Never done an online auction. See, MY favourite kind is where nine guys gather in someone’s garage, drink beer and talk sh** and then some annoying fella on the other side of the world has the information fed to him via Gmail chat…

I actually think that an auction is the best way to get Mauer. What other position allows you to get the best in class for under $20? In a draft you have to spend a 2nd or 3rd round pick for Mauer, which is way too high, and equates to more than $20.

I never leave money on the table. I am almost always left with 5 spots to go and $6 left. This is where keepers are born.

REALLY want to keep Snider. Obviously I have some speed and have been dangling Ellsbury and Haren. Have those two out there for Pedro Alvarez. I also have the first pick in the draft so its possible I could let one of these guys go to pick up first anyway.

I hate keeping 2 closers but their value demands I keep them. Do I overpay for somebody using guys who are overvalued at the moment? (Latos and maybe McCutchen) Also, do I ditch Hill for Snider if I stand pat?

@Grey: could you, or anyone, rate some of the popular draft/auction software out there? I was planning on buying fantistics for my auction this year. This would actually make for a great article but I understand not alienating the sponsers too.

@Jay (and others) Inflation is a very misunderstood auction concept. Keepers that are undervlued might force owners to up their bids on premium players early in the auction, but if you pay $40 for a $30 player that player is still only worth $30 at the end of the day. Finding bargains is the key in any auction.

@Davepornstar I would never use auction software. You need to pay attention to the flow of the auction, not bury your head in a laptop.

Auction style is the only way to go. There are a lot of great strategies here, I have ran a 10 team 10×10 with $500 cap league for 5 years. It is an 8 man keeper league, so a lot of times top talent is kept. Here is an awesome strategies that I have seen used. Last year Youkilis and Morneau were the last of the top 1B left. It was obvious a guy was waiting for one of these two to be nominated. The guy that won Morneau for $65 turned right around and nominated Youkilis for $65. It was classic, the team that let Morneau go for “cheap” was burned and had to overpay for Youklis. So pay attention to teams needs and don’t be afraid to be stuck with top talent at your Utility spot. Other teams will notice your fearlessness and someone will be screaming “you can’t let him have Morneau and Youklis” as happened last year.